


Master of the House

by isquinnabel



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Gen, Instagram, Les Miserables - Freeform, Present day setting, School Play, Sisters, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 21:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3503192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isquinnabel/pseuds/isquinnabel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold are very different, and no-one is more aware of this than they are themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Compete

**Author's Note:**

> Er, I feel it should probably be said that my knowledge of music is more akin to Carolyn’s. I’m just shamelessly making things up. So, if you’re someone with Knowledge and Wisdom when it comes to putting on a musical, you will immediately see through my very thin lies.
> 
> But, anyway, LOOK! A FIC! It has been a ridiculously long time since I’ve written BSC fic that was neither AU nor crossover. And it’s about clients, too!! And very much set in the present day. All these things I don't do very often! Such maaaadness!
> 
> Each chapter uses a prompt from my babysitters100 prompt table at Dreamwidth. Chapter 1 uses Compete, chapter 2 uses Elegant.

Marilyn bites her tongue and narrows her eyes.

There’s a lot of yellow. She _likes_ yellow though, so… that’s okay, right?

 _Of course it’s okay_ , she scoffs. She refuses to waste another second overthinking an instagram post, of all things. 

_Lazy Sundays... #lazy #Sunday #yellow #pedicure #spring_ … Her toenails are bright yellow against the dark green of the grass. You can’t tell from the picture, but she had to hold her arm at an awkwardly uncomfortable angle to successfully take the photo. Her caption is a lie. There’s nothing even a little bit lazy about it. _Honest_ instagram would have a caption like, “I spent an hour and thirty minutes slaving over my toenails for this photo, and another fifteen trying to get the perfect angle and filter. Please, please like it. Please. I am _this_ close to trading book reports for instagram comments. Mrs. Somersby, third period. Look me up. I’ll get you a good grade, I swear.”

Except she never would. Even if for no other reason than David Michael Thomas already has a lock on the overly honest instagram schtick, and she _knows_ it doesn’t work; he just comes across as bitter.

_______

 

Marilyn hadn’t intended to check, but, well… She’d run out of things to do by about 9:30pm and found herself just laying there, lights out, buried under layers of patchwork quilt. Staring at the ceiling. Listening to the frenetic strains of music that were escaping from under Carolyn’s closed door and wafting into her own room.

A few quick swipes confirmed what she suspected. Carolyn’s last update was about an hour old: she wore an adorable t-shirt with some science joke emblazoned across the front; her makeup was the exact right mix of hey-man-look-how-funky-I-am and no-but-this-can-actually-100%-pass-for-my-natural-tone; and she managed to somehow pull off a wink without looking like she was, to use one of Margo’s mom’s phrases, _open for business_.

Even in the ten seconds since she opened the app, the likes on Carolyn’s photo have gone up from 33 to 35. _Weekend’s not over yet, kids! #selfie #schrodingerscat #HELLYEAHSUNDAYNIGHT #cokezerohigh_

It’s been a good eight hours since her update this afternoon, and Marilyn has two pity-likes: one from Mom, and one from Mary Anne Spier.

She kicks the wall, hard. “GODDAMMIT CAROLYN WOULD YOU TURN YOUR MUSIC DOWN, SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO SLEEP.”

_______

 

“Hey, Marilyn, are you busy at lunch?” Betsy Sobak bounces nervously on the balls of her feet. “Sorry, I mean, I know you need to eat and stuff…”  
“Relax, Betsy.” Marilyn closes her locker. “I already figured I’d be spending the whole of lunchtime holed up in one of the practice rooms.”  
In her head, she had intended for that to sound jokey and nonchalant. Instead, it had come out sounding snippy and rude.  
“Jeez, Marilyn, don’t have a cow,” Betsy rolls her eyes. “If you’re gonna be like _that_ about it, I’ll just wait til after school.”  
Marilyn shakes her head. “That came out wrong. Lunch is fine.”

Betsy doesn’t really have any good reason to be so nervous. She’s a shoo-in for _something_. Not Cosette – that’ll go straight to Myriah Perkins, a.k.a. half the reason SHS feels like they can confidently put on Les Mis in the first place (the other half is Norman Hill). But if the sheet music clutched to her chest is any indication, Betsy apparently has her heart set on Éponine, and Marilyn can’t help but feel unsure about that. It’s not that Betsy wouldn’t make a perfectly adequate Éponine. It’s that… well, Betsy would make an exceptionally fabulous Madame Thénadier. Marilyn would sooner die than admit this to her, but Betsy is the only student in the entire school who Marilyn can see pulling off that role.

“I brought my lunch today, so I won’t need to stop by the cafeteria. Practice room 2?”  
“Practice room 2,” agrees Betsy. “See you there!”

_______

 

_One day more til revolution #lunchtime #piano #lesmiserables #rehearsal #lastminute_

Marilyn instagrams piano-ey things way too often. She’s just taken her ten thousandth photos of sunlit piano keys with a corner of sheet music visible, slapped a filter on it, and called it a day.

No wonder no-one gives a crap about what she puts up.

_______

 

Marilyn never thought she would catch herself thinking this, but she misses Jordan Pike.

Yeah, he was kind of full of himself, but not without good reason. He was a decent piano player, and today marks the first time in history that Marilyn has been the only accompanist at the SHS musical auditions. Her wrists are killing her, and if she never plays _On My Own_ ever again, it’ll be too soon. 

“Sobak!”

Nerves generally work in Betsy’s favour, and today is no exception; her eyes look simply enormous, and the slight tremble in her voice gives it a depth she hadn’t quite reached at lunchtime. Marilyn isn’t really sure if she and Betsy are friends, exactly, but when it boils down to it, she’s sort of proud of her. She’ll kick ass in the musical, whoever she ends up cast as.

“Thank you, Betsy, that was lovely.”

Betsy flashes a quick grin before skipping offstage. She’s happy. She’ll expect a full debrief via text tonight; Marilyn’s thumbs are tired just thinking about it.

“Bouvier!”

Like everyone else in the universe, Sabrina Bouvier auditions with _On My Own_. She’s not bad, either, but something about her voice makes Marilyn wish she was listening to her sing _I Dreamed A Dream_ instead. Sabrina and Betsy are both perfectly good singers but, if you asked Marilyn, their voices were distinctly suited to different songs. Sabrina should be Fantine, no doubt about it, but something about _On My Own_ has always been irresistible to high-school girls. Hell, Marilyn herself would be performing today it if she had a scrap of singing talent in her body. She might be totally over it at the moment, but she absolutely adores that song; she’s loved it ever since learning it as an exam piece in seventh grade.

“Thank you, Miss Bouvier.”

Sabrina nods delicately – the most over-rehearsed casual bow in history – before gliding gently offstage.

“Arnold!”

Marilyn blinks. “Um.”

It takes her a minute to work out what’s happening. She assumes that Mr. Benton has simply misread the sign-up sheet, and accidentally included her name in the list of girls auditioning for soloist roles. She’s about half a second away from shouting _no, Mr. Benton, I’m the accompanist… remember?_ when Carolyn comes bounding onstage.

 _Oh_. Marilyn holds her face perfectly still; she was moments away from letting her jaw drop.

“Afternoon, guys,” grins Carolyn, casually ruining everything. “How are we all today? Good?”

“Not bad, Miss Arnold, not bad at all. What are you singing for us today?”

“I’ll be singing _Master of the House_ ,” announces Carolyn, her voice echoing clearly throughout the auditorium. She glances over her shoulder at Marilyn. “Just from the chorus, if that’s okay.”

Marilyn flicks haphazardly through pages of music. _No, it’s not okay_ , she seethes. _Would it have killed you to warn me a little?_ She hasn’t played _Master of the House_ for days; she didn’t expect anyone would audition with it. Not even Betsy, and she was actively trying to convince her to do so. She isn’t even one hundred per cent sure she’s launching into the right part of the song for whatever her sister has planned, but all doubts evaporate once she starts playing and Carolyn dives headlong into the performance. It’s the stormiest Marilyn’s ever played _Master of the House_ , but that particular weirdness goes unnoticed; the room is too entranced by Carolyn’s stage-smirk to care. She gets super into it; the smattering of kids watching the auditions eat her performance up with wide grins and eyes like saucers, and her shoulders mark time as she loops back around into a verse.

“Master of the house,” she tosses her hair, “isn’t worth my spit. Comforter, philosopher, and life… long… shit.” She pops a hip. “Cunning little brain. Regular Voltaire. Thinks he’s quite a lover,” she rolls her eyes so hard, just watching almost hurts, “…but there’s not much there.” Marilyn slams her thumb onto a key. “What a cruel trick of nature… landed me with such a louse…” Carolyn stomps, ”God knows how I’ve lasted,” she yells, “living with this bastard in the house!”

The kids in the auditorium burst into cheers, because of course they do. Carolyn has never quite been able to successfully carry a tune, but that doesn’t seem to matter this afternoon. _She’s your competition!_ Marilyn wants to yell at them. _She’s just trounced you! Be less happy about it!_

“Thank you, Miss Arnold,” says Mr. Benton, taking off his glasses. “That was… most unexpected.”

Carolyn giggles. “Thanks, Mr. Benton. I think.” She hops down the stairs, two at a time, while Mr. Benton stands up. “Well,” he says, “Miss Arnold has rounded out the ladies’ auditions for us. Now, onto the gents. Rodowsky!”

_______

 

Exactly nobody is surprised when Carolyn Arnold is cast as Madame Thénadier. A photo of the cast list turns up on instagram, hashtagged _#helenabonhamcarter_ and _#eatyourheartout_. 

_______

 

The world is all wrong.

Marilyn’s language of choice is music, but the written word is somewhere in her top five. She’s okay at a very particular type of writing: school writing. She can deal with school stuff just fine. It’s when colloquialisms get involved and visuals start to play a role that everything falls to pieces.

Marilyn just doesn’t have it. She needs the trifecta to make it work: if she ever encounters a Disney genie, she’ll ask for a photographer’s eye, mixed with a head for social trivia, combined with an effortless wordsmith ability. She tries, she tries so hard, but it’s just not a language she can ever hope to deal in. Especially not with her sister permanently exceeding whatever she could begin to hope for.

Carolyn is a natural. Carolyn is tailor-made, not just for school circles in general, but for the age of social media. Carolyn is everything everyone in her grade wishes they could be, and she doesn’t even need to put any effort in. That cool, quippy science-chick isn’t just an internet persona. It’s who Carolyn is.

Marilyn can’t compete with that.

_______

 

#itried


	2. Elegant

“Three, two, _one_!”

Margo shoves her. “You did that on purpose!”  
“I didn’t, I swear,” Carolyn giggles. “Calm down, Margo, I’m deleting it.”  
“Yeah, well, you better.” Margo tosses her hair over her shoulders. “If that photo of me ever graces the internet, you better start watching your back. I have brothers, remember! My revenge game is strong!”  
“It’s gone! Gone from the face of the universe! Gone forever!”  
“Good.” Margo hesitates. “…One more try?” 

This time, at long last, Margo declares the resulting photo to be acceptable. Except…  
“For you, maybe,” frowns Carolyn. “Look at my orang-utan arm!” She’s seriously regretting wearing stripes today; her arms are on the long side at the best of times, but in this sweater she looks like an early phase of human evolution.

“This was an excellent use of our time,” muses Margo, as Carolyn deletes the last of the photos. “Truly brilliant.”  
“If it bothers you, I can always justify the time spent by uploading one of–”  
“DON’T YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!”

_______

 

_I will try something I’ve never done before_ had been Carolyn’s New Year’s resolution this year.

Back during auditions, she’d made a conscious decision not to overthink it. She’d never auditioned for a school musical, so… there you go. It fit the bill. Hey, it was worth a try. Every year so far, the school musical had been something she’d barely heard of (unless you counted the ambient noise of Marilyn’s relentless practicing) but that wasn’t a problem this year; she’s familiar with the movie that came out awhile ago. This was as good a year as any to give it a try. She went out on a limb at the auditions, risked making an idiot out of herself, and it paid off. Sort of.

She’s still trying to work out whether actually landing a role was something she’d ever wanted in the first place.

Carolyn has spent the last 2.5 years diligently cultivating a carefree, happy-go-lucky image. She knows people like her. Of _course_ she knows – you don’t devote your entire life to curating your image only to be oblivious to the fact that people like you. That’s exactly the problem: if she wants to maintain her current level of popularity, then this might not have been a particularly good idea. She isn’t exactly sure she’s ready to bring her whole public persona crashing down with one ill-timed risk. Because, and it needs to be said: Carolyn is not a singer. It just so happens that the one time she auditions for the school play, she picks a role where being actively terrible can be applauded as a stylistic choice.

Mom is pleased with her at the moment, which is a nice change, but Carolyn hasn’t quite been forthcoming with information about her actual role in the play. If there’s one thing she can guarantee, it’s that Mom won’t exactly be thrilled once it sinks in that her daughter will be onstage, shrieking lines like “raise it up the Master’s ass!”

_______

 

She can’t concentrate. She’s supposed to spend her afternoon study hall balancing chem equations, but instead she finds herself doing vague google image searches. 

Carolyn might struggle to pick out a tune, but she can put together a kickass mural, that’s for damn certain.

_______

 

_What goes up must stay there indefinitely #inspiration #diy #ceilingart #whatevenisgravityanyway #lbrnormaniswaybetterthanrussellcrowe_

**baby-pikelet** , **gracegracehermioneface** , **perky.laauurraaaahhh** and 18 others like this.

**enormous.hill.00** i want “way better than russell crowe” on my tombstone  
 **baby-pikelet** um i think it’s worth pointing out that afaik no one has seen myriah and amanda seyfrid in the same room before. like, I’m just saying.  
 **myriahcaffrey** god claire you can’t even spell my name right, it’s s-e-y-f-r-i-e-d OH WAIT OOPS  
 **baby-pikelet** GASP I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT, EVER SINCE YOUR MYSTERIOUS ABSENCES FROM SCHOOL DURING THE MAMMA MIA FILMING SCHEDULE  
 **carolyn.AHHnold** ill keep that in mind, norman  
 **rodowskidaddle** carolyn, you use yellow blue tack? For real? I’m so disappointed in you.  
 **carolyn.AHHnold** …idk what to tell you, jack. Tbh i prefer pink, but all i had left was yellow.  
 **baby-pikelet** UM  
 **baby-pikelet** UM EXCUSE ME JUST A MINUTE  
 **baby-pikelet** CAROLYN ARNOLD ARE YOU TELLING ME  
 **baby-pikelet** ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THERE IS SUCH THING AS PINK BLU TACK?  
 **carolyn.AHHnold** UM, YES I AM  
 **baby-pikelet** NO  
 **baby-pikelet** NO NO NO NO NO  
 **baby-pikelet** I HAVE BEEN USING BULLSHIT MUGGLE BLUE TACK MY ENTIRE LIFE  
 **baby-pikelet** I’M SO ANGRY  
 **0princess0barfface0** thanks a lot carolyn, she won’t shut up irl either  
 **carolyn.AHHnold** ask yourself, margo, who is the real victim here?  
 **0princess0barfface0** shut up

_______

 

If Carolyn could change one thing about herself, she would be more elegant.

The crap thing about being a twin is that, as far as everyone else is concerned, there’s another version of you permanently out there. A perpetual yardstick. Sure, _she_ knows this is ridiculous, and presumably Marilyn does too; she can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t fully aware that she and her sister were very different people. Even back at the beginning of elementary school, when Mom and Dad made them dress in nauseating identical outfits, they both knew all along that they were exceptionally different. Finally getting to prove this to everyone and forge separate identities was a hard-won victory, one that neither she nor Marilyn took for granted.

But the rest of the world is easily fooled by identical hair color and similar facial structure. Life got a lot better once she and her sister didn’t have to act like clones anymore, but she was wrong when she assumed the root of the problem would just go away forever. 

The fact remains that there’s another version of Carolyn out there. Claire Pike _claims_ to understand this problem, but she really has no idea. No-one expects her to be exactly like Margo or Vanessa or Mallory. When has anyone ever looked at Vanessa Pike and thought, “oh, look, it’s the poetry version of Claire”? She’s never raised this with the triplets, but they get it. She _knows_ they get it. Honestly, she’s always felt kind of sorry for poor Byron Pike. He had to deal with a hell of a lot worse fallout from Adam and Jordan’s reputations than she ever has with Marilyn’s.

_______

 

Marilyn’s wearing a floral skirt, and a white button-down shirt. _It’s exactly the sort of outfit Mom keeps trying to convince me to wear_ , Carolyn sighs inwardly. She’s not really into skirts. She’d _like_ to be – she loves the idea of being so pretty and dainty – but it would never work. She’s too haphazard in her general presentation to be able to risk it. Jeans are just… safer.

Chin up, shoulders back, Marilyn plays relentlessly on. Carolyn can’t really identify any piano mistakes, but that doesn’t matter; Marilyn never makes any. Carolyn absent-mindedly runs her fingers through her hair, defiantly leaving her curls in a state of disarray.

_______

 

Carolyn hesitates.   
“Hey… Marilyn?”  
She stops playing. “Mm?”

The silence is deafening. Carolyn hasn’t ever fully realized just how noisy her sister can be, but she totally is. The Arnold household has so much piano music constantly playing in the background, it’s practically a stately country manor house.

Or an old West bordello.

“Can you, um… play _Master of the House_ through for me? But like… simply? I dunno, there are all these bits I can’t quite get.”

Marilyn hesitates. “Do you mean just the melody?”

“Yeah!” enthuses Carolyn. “That’s the phrase I was looking for. The melody. I just can’t… something about it doesn’t quite work when I try to sing it.”

Marilyn, one-handed, taps out the chorus. “This is where you keep messing up,” she says, pointing to some indistinguishable section of the music with her left hand. She plays the chorus through again. “Hear that?”

“ _No_ ,” groans Carolyn. “How do you _do_ that?”

Marilyn bites her bottom lip. “I dunno. I guess I’ve just practiced a lot.”

“Well… can you play it the wrong way? Like, the way I’ve been singing it? Maybe I’ll notice the difference better if I hear them both, one after the other.”

“Sure.” Marilyn launches into the melody again, humming along. “That’s the wrong way.” She restarts from the beginning of the chorus, jauntily bobbing her shoulders. “And that’s the right way. You’re supposed to go up. Do you hear it?”

“I think so.” Carolyn frowns. “What would I do without you?”

Marilyn holds her gaze. “Die, probably.”

_______

 

_SISTERRRSSSS R DOIN IT 4 THEMSELLVVEESSSSSSS #masterofthehouse #pianosuperstar #seriouslyimnotconvincedweshareanyDNA #howdoessheDOthat_

**baby-pikelet** , **0princess0barfface0** , **beccab00zle** , and 21 others like this.

_______

 

_Master of the house, keeper of the zoo #lesmiserables #rehearsal #piano #everybodysbooncompanion #everybodyschaperone_

**carolyn.AHHnold** and **maryyyanne12** like this.


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